"Wake up you lazy bum!" screeched a high-pitched voice breaking Raoul form his dreams. "We should have been on the road for over an hour!" Raoul blinked several times while attempting to make sense of his current situation. The voice belonged to the dryad that by some mischance was now bound to him; however, for the life of him he could not figure out why she was so irate.

"What is your hurry?" Raoul inquired just before he yawned loudly.

"What's my hurry?" the dryad exclaimed then looked toward the sky as though begging for understanding from the gods before speaking again. "This 'druid' kills my tree and takes on its role in my existence, and he asks 'What's my hurry?' Why oh great Vat, why?" This last was said in a irritating whine. Taking a deep calming breath the dryad then looked back at him.

"Look," she began in a calmer tone, "we are going to be stuck with each other for a while, but you did promise me to find a way to reverse this." As she spoke the dryad motioned her hand between the two of them. "Now, can we get started?"

"Well, if you wish," Raoul began while attempting to get up, "but I don't know what your hurry is, I have no clue where to begin." After trying several times to lift his rump from the ground, he realized that something was wrong.

"Why are you still sitting there?" the dryad asked growing irritated once again.

"Uh," Raoul began stupidly not sure where to begin so he decided on simplicity, "I'm stuck."

"Your stuck?" the dryad asked in an irritated tone, laced with growing scorn.

"Yes stuck," Raoul restated, "I can't lift myself form the ground." To accentuate his point he pushed up against the ground till it felt like needles were pricking his rump.

As he watched the dryad grimaced in pain then she spoke, "Stop that you fool!" When he had ceased she continued, "Men! So willing to put themselves in pain just to prove a point!" After this tirade the dryad took another calming breath, then knelt down beside him. By feeling around under his rump and between his legs she was able to gather the information she needed.

"Why miss, I don't even know your name," Raoul said cracking a joke at her means of gathering that information. Despite her irritation the dryad was unable to keep an amused smile from touching her lips at the joke, but the smile soon faded.

"You've taken root," the dryad stated then stood and began removing her garments.

"What are you doing?" Raoul asked a bit confused with her actions.

"Just shut up!" the dryad snapped, "I am going to have to work a little magic here, and since you are behaving like a tree I am going to treat you as tree." With that the dryad sat down beside him wearing not a stitch and wrapped her arms around him before kissing him. The next few hours were lost to Raoul.

"There," Raoul heard as he came to again. Looking up he saw that the dryad was standing over him once again dressed in her tunic. Reaching up to scratch his chin he realized that his beard was gone.

“What happened to my beard!” Raoul exclaimed.

“I shaved it off while you slept,” the dryad announced. “By the way, why do you carry a razor if you don’t use it.”

“You shaved off my beard?” Raoul asked with horror. “Do you know how long it took to grow it and then get it looking the way I wanted it? And I did use the razor for trimming.”

The dryad only gave him that look then answered, “No I don’t, and you could have fooled me. Besides this looks much better, you no longer look like you have a furry rat hanging from your chin.”

Raoul’s pride was hurt by the dryad’s words, but at that moment a flash of remembered events popped into his mind. “Did we just…?”

An annoyed look came over the dryad’s face at his words. “I did what I had to, as embarrassing as it was I had to use a dryad ritual for relocating saplings of our trees.” A smile spread across the dryad’s lips as she spoke, but was soon gone. "Anyways, the end result is that you are no longer rooted where you sat and we can be on our way.”

“Alright, but wasn’t that…?” Raoul began again but was cut short.

“Enough!” the irritated dryad exclaimed. “It was a one time ordeal not to be repeated, so don’t be expecting anything. From this point on this is a business relationship.”

“Ok,” Raoul agree with a silly grin on his lips as he stood up. “So where to?”

“How am I to know? You’re the traveler of the group, you tell me,” snapped the dyrad.

“Well,” Raoul began, “to the west is Vargbriton, it would be a good place to start.”

“Whatever,” the dyrad said.

As they began their walk in a westerly direction Raoul spoke again. “Considering the circumstances, do you think I could know your name?”

At this the dryad threw her hands in the air and whispered under her breath, “Men!”

Minutes passed in the area vacated by the druid and dryad and silence once again settled into the area. Up in a tree sat two squirrels: one munching on an acorn, while the other held a tiny fore paw under chin in thought. “Well, that was interesting don’t you think?” the thoughtful one inquired of the other. When the other did not reply it simply shrugged as though it hadn’t expected an answer anyways.

“Good day to you good squirrel,” stated the thoughtful one before leaping into empty space and transforming into a great horned owl. With a flap of its wings the owl flew off in the direction which the two strange creatures had gone.